Little Red Book #1: Swapping Statues (I)

It is important to have a Strategy before you play. When first starting out, a lot of people complain that there is simply too much information. This can be attributed to lack of a plan, a simple game plan which you have predetermine on how to identify the Spy. If you lack a Strategy before you begin, you will feel clueless and lost. (A lot of people realize this implicitly while learning. In my opinion, this is less efficient than explicitly knowing.) This begs the question, how should one devise a strategy? For this, we employ the idea of motifs. Motifs are common themes which are present in many strategies. By studying motifs, you can better think of strategies suitable for oneself and effectively use them.

The first motif you will learn is the concept of “Camping”. “Camping” is a very basic idea. If you know that the Spy must do a mission, then by simply watching out for the mission, you would be able to identify the Spy. There seems to be some initial avoidance to doing this for a Beginner Sniper, as it might seem unfair or overpowered. But this is indeed the basic stepping stone where everything is based upon. From the motif, we can notice two key important parts for it to be successful. Firstly, you must know a mission where the Spy must attempt. This is easily dealt with as you play Beginner Ballroom, where you know the Spy must attempt the four stated missions. The second is that you can notice every single time the Spy does that mission. This is however not as simple and will be the topic for discussion this lesson. In the four missions available, swapping statues is actually the easier to track and will be our focus for today.

Swapping statues is considered a hard tell mission, which means that there is a visible indication to the exact person who has done it. If a mission is not a hard tell mission, it is considered a soft tell mission. Hard tell missions go hand-in-hand with the motif of “Camping”. In this case, you can identify the exact person who has swap the statue as you can see the statue morph while the culprit is holding onto it. Moreover, the Statues would otherwise remain unchanged. This means we can attempt to memorize the Statues initially, followed by a check after any partygoer visit the statue. If the statue has changed, the person who last visited that Statue is the Spy.

This allow us to devise Strategy A which goes as such:

Step 1 | After the map just loaded, memorize the 6 Statues in Beginner Ballroom.
Step 2 | Check the Statues after a partygoer leaves after visiting. If they have been changed, go to Step 4.
Step 3 | Repeat Step 2 until the map timeouts.
Step 4| Shoot the last person who visited the changed Statue.

After every strategy we devise, we have to consider how effective it is and it’s limitations. One key limitation is in our ability to carry out Step 1. This is explored in Exercise 1.1.3. There are no other clear limitations we can see for now but more possibilities are explored in Exercise 1.1.5. However, we can consider the effectiveness of this strategy easily. Our premise of the motif is that the Spy must do the mission. This is indeed the case on Beginner Ballroom. Hence, this is a fool-proof way of ensuring that we will identify who he/she is. This is because if the Spy does not complete the mission, the map will simply timeout and the Spy would lose anyway.

Exercises Set 1.1
1) Classify the other 3 missions available in Beginner Ballroom (Contact Double Agent, Transferring Microfilm and Bug the Ambassador) by determining if they are hard tell missions or soft tell missions.
2) Devise a strategy by applying the motif “Camping” to the mission Bug the Ambassador. Do not concern yourself over whether the limitations or the effectiveness of this Strategy.
3) There are only 3 different Statue types. Use this information to optimize the step of Memorizing the Statues in Strategy A.
4) Now that we have discuss Strategy A, it is important to put this into practice. Play a few games against someone of similar skill level on Beginner Ballroom. Attempt to carry out Strategy A and prevent the Spy from winning.
5*) Once you have shot the Spy consistently for Beginner Ballroom by camping Statues. The Spy may adapt and try to thwart your plan by changing when they decide to swap. Determine the changes that the Spy had made and suggest possible modifications to Strategy A to locate the Spy.
6*) There is something known as Green Action Tests which might render Strategy A ineffective. Green Action Tests are discussed in Lesson 5. For those who know what they are, consider how this affects Strategy A, and what changes have to be made to accommodate Green Tests.
7*) Use the strategy derived in Exercise 1.1.6 in a couple of games against other people. Attempt to execute the Strategy and prevent the Spy from winning.

Little Red Book #0: Introduction

Welcome to your journey to improve Sniper Play.

Fundamentally, there are two categories when studying Sniper Play.  The division is between Theoretical Sniper Play and Practical Sniper Play. Theoretical Sniper Play lay emphasis on things a perfect Sniper would see, for example, the distance where NPCs can see. This is important as when the NPCs return a briefcase to an ambassador, he will stop when he notices the ambassador is busy. This distance is very difficult to determine for a human sniper though, so falls into the category of Theoretical Sniper Play.

Practical Sniper Play emphasizes on things you can directly apply to your game. For example, the information that NPCs pause after landing at a Statue landing pad and before picking up the Statue. This knowledge could be applied to your game directly, and you can identify the spy from that. The division is rather nebulous, as Theory can become Practical if someone discover a way to make approximations or attain previously difficult-to-attain metrics. This guide is structured in such a way that there will is an emphasis on Theoretical Sniper Play and allowing you, the reader, to discover how this information can be suitably applied to your game.

I would assume that you could be someone who just started SpyParty, as this lessons are most suitable for. I would strongly recommend to play with people on similar skill levels. Someone who has slightly more wins than you can utterly decimate you, due to the high difficult curve of the game. Moreover, I would recommend that you play on Beginner vs Beginner Ballroom. This map is suited for the Beginner Sniper. (For games against people much better than you, “mentoring games”, follow the advice of your mentor. This is because they know better and it is completely unfair to you otherwise.) Finally, a word on the terms I will be using, there might be various terms which I do not properly explain. I would try to define them as I deem fit, but if you have any queries, feel free to ask in the comments section.

There will be two sections in each tutorial. The first section will cover the bare-bones, minimal amount of information to get you started. This is where you should concentrate your efforts. You should try to follow the exercises I suggest, which will be a guided process on how to improve your game. The second section is targeted at the readers who have mastered what is listed in the first section, preferably having done the entire lecture already (having completed the first section in each lesson). It would list further directions where you could look into, and other things you could consider while playing.

This is a tough journey, but I urge you to never lose hope. It would take a while before you will see an improvement in your game, but I assure you. After about two dozen games, and following what you will learn, there will be a distinctive improvement in the level of your play.  I hope you can have fun in this process of improvement and come to appreciate the beauty of Sniper Play, the most beautiful aspect of SpyParty.

Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings in Sniper Play

I have realized that a lot of SpyParty’s tutorials aimed towards beginners are Spy-oriented. This is perhaps because it is easier to teach how to play as spy. Furthermore, Sniper guides are based towards more intermediate players, leaving behind a gap which is not bridged. However, it is important that Sniper Play is not neglected, and this tutorial series aims to fix that. This is not a tutorial in a typical sense, I will not show you actions to carry out. However, I will provide general guidelines that you should follow in the path of improvement. I hope to instill in you the beauty of Sniper Play and how theory is put into practice to achieve wins. It will build up a fundamental backing of how you should approach sniping.

This is aimed at novice snipers who just got their hands on the game, preferably with 0-20 Sniper Wins. There are six parts in this tutorial, listed as follows.

Lesson 0 – Introduction (I)
Lesson 1 – Swapping Statues (I)
Lesson 2 – The Microfilm Transfer
Lesson 3 – Contacting the Double Agent
Lesson 4 – Bugging the Ambassador
Lesson 5 – Green Action Tests
Lesson 6 – Further Directions